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Keeping with the previous post from today, the video below blends CG and live action so well you really can’t tell which is which at times. The live action footage was shot in Italy over a 3 day period by Adam Berg and MPC for the Xbox game Forza Horizon 2. This 90 second spot has a huge crew, and obviously a huge budget and it shows. It’s a really well done action packed spot. The MPC VFX Team of 22 people did an amazing job blending the VFX into the live action footage. All in all they created 3D scenes with the tilt-shift effects, compositing depth passes, crafting over 40 matte paintings and adding CG racetracks, cars, and explosions. Once again technology moves forward and makes film and video work even better.

I’m not much of a computer or console gamer any more. I used to play a few games on the PC but I really haven’t played much of anything beyond my phone or iPad in quite awhile. That doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate the art, craft, and storytelling that go into making a game that really stands out. With that said I might have to pick up “Ori and The Blind Forest” when it comes out this fall, if for nothing else than the beautiful artwork it contains.

Four years in the making, and advances in computer technology have allowed Moon Studios, and Microsoft to create something that really is visually stunning. A platform game that pays homage to 8 and 16 bit games of the past, “Ori and The Blind Forest” truely raises the bar visually to an entirely new level. Below are images, and the official trailer for the game. The look of the video is what the actual game will look like, and frankly I think it is pretty exciting.

Over the past four years, Moon Studios has been feverishly working on Ori and the Blind Forest.

At Moon Studios, we all grew up playing games like Super Metroid, Zelda: A Link to the Past, etc. and with Ori, we wanted to recapture the magic of these games.

Ori and the Blind Forest is a bit of a genremix – It’s a ‘Metroidvania‘, but with a stronger platforming focus and light RPG elements, all set within an atmospheric world.

Naturally we tried to push 2D gaming forward on all fronts: We tried to make every single screen in Ori look like a painting come to life while making sure that the controls are still pixel-perfect.

We’ve been taking lessons from games like Super Metroid and A Link to the Past in order to really bring back this sensation you had when you played the games Nintendo was building in the early 90s. The level of polish and the execution of design in these games – we feel – was extraordinary. We felt strongly that children and adults today should get that same feeling again. Remember the first time you played Zelda or Metroid when you were a child? We hope that years from now people will also remember the first time they got to play Ori and the Blind Forest.

We also push the story angle really hard. We explored some new ways of telling stories within 2D games and we’ve been heavily influenced by Ghibli/Miyazaki as well as by great animated films of the 90s like The Lion King or The Iron Giant.

Ori is a bit of a coming-of-age story. The player is put into the role of a forest spirit, who – over the course of his journey – has to find out more about his role within the world he’s living in. We tried to create memorable characters in an atmospheric world and to craft a story that players will truly care about!

A few months ago Microsoft demoed “Illumiroom” and while it looked promising, the preview didn’t go into a whole lot of detail. The five minute YouTube video below from Microsoft goes into greater detail, and really shows where Microsoft is pushing the next level of gaming. This is some pretty slick technology, and has a ton of potential well beyond the gaming world. It’ll be interesting to see how long it takes this to make it to your living room, and what the price point will be.